‘A soldier has been called a “disgrace” for posting offensive Facebook messages over the death of a three-year-old boy. Warren Butler, 19, from Carlisle, was handed a 16-week sentence, suspended for 18 months and ordered to complete 250 hours community service.’

“A parliamentary inquiry into phone hacking by tabloid journalists may have been seriously misled, it emerged yesterday when lawyers acting for a Scotland Yard detective denied that he had ever claimed that messages to 6,000 people had been intercepted.”

“The Metropolitan Police knew that numerous mobile phones had been illegally hacked by private investigators but failed to alert the phones’ owners, according to The Guardian newspaper. If so, the victims should have been told, a privacy expert has said.”

“News International was facing three fresh inquiries into the conduct of its journalists and executives following the Guardian’s disclosures that Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire paid £1m to keep secret the use of criminal methods to get stories.”

“Rupert Murdoch’s News Group News­papers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.”